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heroes in a half shell turtle power hey how's it going guys this is Dave 2d and this is a video on using external GPUs with the 2016 MacBook Pros now when these laptops first launched I was pretty excited about this connection because these laptops have nothing but then about three connections and these external GPUs have federal three ports so they should just work right well they don't the first issue is that Apple currently prevents Thunderbolt 3 enclosures from communicating with MacBook Pros the second thing is that you need Mac OS to recognize that there's an external GPU in there and by default it doesn't and then if you want to run this thing in boot camp for Windows the issue there is the allocation of PCIe bridges all complicated stuff but fortunately some people have found some solutions to these issues the thing is before you kind of get into them understand that there is an element of risk to this I found that they were safe I think that it's necessary to make this connection happen so I did them but kind of do this stuff at your own discretion do it at your own risk so first you have to figure out which macbook you're using and also whether or not you want to use it for mac OS or use it for bootcamp Windows you can make all of them work it's just a matter of figuring out which one you want to use it for I've linked a general guide down below but if you want to get into it and you're actually interested in doing this for your own MacBook I suggest you read into it and kind of figure out exactly the steps because the biggest thing is that the process is going to change over time as new devices come out as software updates happen the information that I would present in a video won't be accurate forever so I've linked stuff below kind of use that as a guide okay so all the 2016 MacBooks can be connected to Thunderbolt 3 enclosures the easiest one to connect up is the 13-inch MacBook Pro without the touch bar that one has the fewest number of tweaks to do the 13-inch model with the touch bar needs a bit more work and then the 15-inch model can also work but they need some more tweaking because they have AMD cards in there but they're all able to connect in terms of enclosure options we have a couple existing ones like the Razer core and we have a few that are coming out from Aikido baizen and Asus to name a few now before Thun about three enclosures were all the rage there were a handful of Thunderbolt 2 enclosures and using the Apple Thunderbolt 2 - Thunderbolt 3 adapter these still connect perfectly and in fact right now the Thunderbolt 2 enclosures have better compatibility than any of the Thunderbolt 3 enclosures which is kind of weird they need fewer steps to get them working in either Mac OS or Windows the downside to these Thunderbolt 2 enclosures is bandwidth Thunderbolt 3 can handle 40 gigabits per second Thunderbolt 2 can only handle 20 gigabits per second so that's a pretty big difference in potential bandwidth so I ran a bunch of benchmarks using different cards and different enclosures and these are the results the first thing to keep in mind right off the RIP you're not going to get the same kind of performance as a desktop PCIe slot that connection will always be the fastest when you put a card into a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure you're getting a drop in performance of about 10% maybe a bit more on some cards kind of expected we've seen this type of performance with Windows laptops and the Razer core the surprising thing to me was the performance on the Thunderbolt 2 enclosures it's a further drop in performance because of the even tighter bandwidth restriction but it's still pretty good you're going to get around 80 to 85% of the maximum performance of the card and all the tests were done with the monitor connected to an external GPU for maximum bandwidth if you pipe data to the external GPU and then back to the laptop screen you get a big performance drop and the same thing applies if you want to use the 5k Thunderbolt 3 display from LG coming back through the cable for its performance so I really don't recommend it so the things that do work most things work when you're running bootcamp in Windows everything from using CUDA cores for video editing to heavy gaming it's all good VR works nicely and every video card that I tried had no issues Mac OS is a different story the GTX 10 series cards from Nvidia like the GTX 1060 or 1080 those don't work there because there are no Mac drivers for the 10 series cards right now you need to use the 900 series other things that don't work that well some benchmarks don't work properly in Mac OS and when you're using extended displays it can be a little bit glitchy so I prefer using mirrored displays but everything else basically works CUDA cores work in Premiere and 3d games run nicely if you want to see particular frame rates for a particular game using a particular video card or resolution you're gonna have to look them up individually but in general you're getting around 80% of the performance when you're using a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure and about 90 percent of the performance of the art when you're using a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure my recommended card if you want something for both bootcamp Windows and Mac OS the 980ti has come down a lot in price if you want something for just bootcamp Windows you can use the 10 series cards but on a 13-inch MacBook Pro because it only has two cores putting a high end card in there like a GTX 1080 can be wasteful if your games a more CPU dependent I'd save the 1080 for a 15-inch MacBook Pro but basically choose your card depending on what you plan on doing with it one last thing you need an active Thunderbolt 3 cable to make the Thunderbolt 3 enclosures work properly they're often short but they can be up to 2 metres in length but just look for the Thunderbolt symbol if the cable doesn't have this symbol there's a very good chance it won't work even if it's a super short cable and that's basically it external GPUs are viable on Mac books they work and for the most part they're pretty reliable now they're not going to have the same kind performance as a regular desktop connection and they're not the easiest things to set up but if you're looking for an Nvidia card for your macbook or if you just want to amp up your gaming experience now you can do it as you know this video hope you guys liked it thumbs if you did subs if you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time